


Eight and Fifty Nights

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Dawn Before the Rest of the World [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Absence, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Because Ugh Grown Man, But Not Really Virgin Sherlock, Buttoned-Up Sherlock, Feels, First Time Penetration, Hand Jobs, Internalized Homophobia, Johnlock - Freeform, Kissing, Love Letters, M/M, Melancholy, Period-Typical Homophobia, Romance, Romantic John, Sad, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-24 20:03:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1615343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buttoned-up butler of Stonefield Hall, Sherlock Holmes, has been utterly won after being wooed to pieces by the grand house's charismatic new gardener, John Watson. Now their budding romance faces its first challenge: Holmes must accompany the family on a European excursion, leaving John bereft of a companion with whom to share his cuppa after supper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Week From Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Witchy Fingers](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Witchy+Fingers).
  * Inspired by [Five Times Sherlock And John Met Cute (And One That Was Decidedly Un-cute)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288150) by [PoppyAlexander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander). 
  * Inspired by [Art and Nature](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1339756) by [PoppyAlexander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander). 



_6 th August_

_Dear Watson,_

_I sincerely hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_The journey to Paris was a study in discomfort and tedium. Once some semblance of comfort or peace was found upon one conveyance, it was inevitably time to unsettle oneself and move to something else: from the auto to the train, from the train to the ferryboat, from the ferryboat to another train. . .I cannot emphasize enough how unpleasant the whole business was, and the day and night spent enduring it will never be returned to me._

_The atmosphere among my fellows on the ferryboat, in particular, was perhaps what others might label “convivial,” as I was stuck in with those of the low, working classes and without work to constrain them, they took full advantage of unstructured time to indulge in the baser pursuits of gossip, gambling, and general vulgarity. I was utterly unable to focus on my preparatory notes, nor even upon the lightest of novels (have you read Oscar Wilde, Watson? He was a genius of wit, and—I now understand—bent as a nine-bob note), so I spent a great deal of time beside the deck rail, where a man could stand in open air, but which of course came at the cost of havoc wreaked upon my suit, my hair, and thus my peace of mind. I imagine you might have enjoyed the raucous camaraderie below decks; you have that talent (and patience) for social adaptation which I so clearly lack._

_The train from Calais was no better, perhaps even worse, as there was no opportunity for an escape to fresh air, not even of the damp and windy sort I’d endured on the channel crossing. At least it was relatively brief._

_My room here is even smaller than my room at Stonefield, and its solitary window looks out onto the (badly maintained—the bricks desperately need re-pointing) rear wall of a neighboring house. I keep the drapes drawn nearly always; the view is too dreary to contemplate._

_You are never far from my thoughts, Watson. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. Time passes with painful slowness until I will at last return to Stonefield Hall._

_Regards,_

_S. Holmes_

John smoothed the two horizontal creases out of Sherlock’s letter, pressing it flat against the wide wooden table in the kitchen. He studied each slim pen-stroke, tracing the “S” at the bottom of the page—one extravagant, sensuous curve among the tightly controlled, elegant script of the rest of the letter—with one calloused fingertip. Each line of text was evenly spaced, the margins uniform, as if Sherlock had been writing on lined stationery, though the delicate paper was pure, blank white aside from the grey-black strokes of the fountain pen. Not a single stray drop of ink. Elegant. Efficient. Nothing wasted. Nothing out of place.

John tipped his tea cup, raised the saucer to his lips and blew across it before taking a sip. Sherlock was not there to scold him about this lowbrow habit. But even Sherlock’s disapproving gaze would have been more pleasant than lingering at the table after supper, without him. One last sweep of his eyes across the text—Sherlock held this paper in his long, elegant hands; Sherlock wrote these words, just for John, thinking about him all the while—and John folded the letter again, skimming his fingertips along the creases to sharpen them. He tucked it back into its envelope then put it in the breast pocket of his shirt for safekeeping. Close to his heart.

John withdrew his miniature sketchbook from his hip pocket and turned to the next-to-last page, where he had drawn himself a calendar, and marked an X now that the sun was setting.  Forty-two more nights alone. Not so long. Only forever.

John poured the rest of his tea into the sink, rinsed his cup and saucer and the teapot and set them to dry. He went back to his room in the little cottage halfway to the stables, readied himself for bed. He raised the letter to his face and inhaled deeply. He tucked the letter under his pillow.

*

“Well, but. . .when?” John could not hide his distress. The corners of his mouth pulled down hard despite his best efforts. Sherlock petted the back of John’s hand; he barely felt it.

“First of August,” Sherlock replied quietly. “A week from tomorrow.”

“And for _how_ long?”

“Seven weeks.”

John’s eyes widened mournfully. “But that’s—“ He sat up in Sherlock’s bed, needing to move, to get away from the words, away from the fact of what Sherlock had just said: that he was leaving. Not away from Sherlock, though. John sat up but moved closer to Sherlock, both at the same time. “But seven weeks is. . .that’s nearly as long as I’ve had you,” John protested.

Sherlock laid his long-fingered hand on John’s naked thigh, gentling him. “I haven’t a choice. The family is going to Paris, and Madame insisted Molly and I go with them. She thinks she’s treating us. Showing us the world, or some such rubbish.” He laid a kiss on John’s bicep, and let his lips linger there, brushing John’s skin as he said, “It’s really quite kind of her; they could just as easily have taken a valet and one of the maids. The Paris house is tiny and runs with barely any staff.”

John allowed Sherlock to persuade him back down onto the mattress. Sherlock smoothed the creases from John’s forehead with the flats of his fingers, his face hovering above John’s.

“Since the moment I first saw you,” John said plaintively, “I never wanted to be without you for even a single minute. And now they’re stealing you away for _two months_?”

“I don’t want to go. This house will be a shambles by the time I return,” Sherlock reassured. “The staff will run riot.”

“There’s your reason not to go,” John said, “Just tell her—“

“You know it’s not my place to tell her anything,” Sherlock said gently. “I do as I’m told.”

John scoffed. “That’s a load of nonsense and you know it. You run that woman just like you run this house.”

Sherlock looked disapproving. “John.”

“It’s true!”

“Not in this case. Now the colonel’s agreed to it, there’s nothing more to be said.”

John’s face was desperately sad. He reached his arms around Sherlock’s back, pulled him down into a deep kiss. “I won’t be able to breathe without you, my own Sherlock Holmes,” he whispered. “I can’t breathe, even now.”

“Shh. . .” Sherlock hushed him, kissed him. “Let me breathe for you, then.” Sherlock leaned close to John’s ear, inhaled slowly, audibly, forever, then exhaled along John’s jaw until his mouth found John’s again. He fitted his lips around John’s lower lip, let them hover there and drew in another long, shallow breath. He started to move again, exhaling against John’s cheek toward his other ear, but John caught Sherlock’s face in his hands, stole the breath right out of him with an urgent kiss.

“I need you,” John said, in a husky, pleading voice, reaching down between their bodies to take Sherlock in his hand; Sherlock’s response was immediate, despite the fact they’d only just finished. “I have eight nights to love you enough for the next fifty.”

Sherlock hummed, and nodded, and sighed. Then kissed. And gasped. And kissed.


	2. Fortune Telling

_11 th August_

_My Dear Watson,_

_I sincerely hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_There is no air in this city (it is not romantically referred to as “the City of Air,” after all). The pavements are as suffocating as the basement laundry; there is no relief._

_The cook is a dowdy grump who makes quite a show of pretending not to understand a word I say, though it is clear her English is passable, and I know my French is practically flawless. One might say it was my native tongue, as it was nearly all I heard spoken in my natal home, before I was installed at Stonefield as a hallboy at the age of eight. “Chef” (though she is barely worthy of the title “cuisiniere”) is merely a bloody-minded biddy feeling usurped in “her” house. By whom, one wonders. Certainly not by me—I’ve no desire to take over her position spooning gluey sauces over cuts of meat no English cook would even bother to save for the hounds. Perhaps she feels threatened by Miss Hooper? I cannot even  imagine the thought process which would bring a person to the conclusion that Miss Hooper is to be in any way either feared or envied. In the event, Molly’s primary occupation while on the continent appears to be eating pastries in cafes, her lips bitten and cheeks pinched in hopes of trapping a husband. Already her overindulgence is beginning to show in the breadth of her face, I imagine she must notice it when she looks in the glass to pin up her hair each morning. Thus far she does not seem bothered._

_Molly sends her regards, by the way. Just yesterday she mentioned she misses the sound of your tuneful whistle going by the kitchen window. I agreed it would be a welcome change from the endless drone of automobile engines—we must keep the house’s windows open lest we all roast to death, but the noise is ceaseless. It’s a wonder every soul in the city has not already been driven mad by the constant racket._

_The work of running the household and the (meagre) staff is a welcome indulgence and passes the hours more quickly than any other pursuit. While Molly’s free hours are in the morning between breakfast and tea, I am free between luncheon and supper (somehow the cook manages to get tea out to the family on her own, though I fear for its quality without my being present to check it on its way from the kitchen to the dining room). I am meant to use these unstructured hours to partake in whatever diversions and cultural improvements are on offer in the city. But as it is not my home, and as I have no companion with whom to pass time in tolerable company—my own being the only tolerable company on offer at present—I generally pass the afternoon with my pipe on a garden bench in the courtyard, or reading here in my tiny cell. Walking out to the tobacconist or a café is unfailingly an exercise in chaos and frustration—haven’t these people somewhere to be? Why do they walk so slowly, and why are there so damned many of them?—and so I try to avoid walking out at all._

_You are never far from my thoughts, Watson. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. A letter from you would bring me the air I desperately need._

_Warmly,_

_S. Holmes_

In Molly’s absence, the cook was relying on little Margaret to pack the lunch buckets for the men working outdoors. She inevitably made mistakes (John wondered which unlucky fellow was going without a sandwich when one day he tucked in and found he’d been given two; another day he’d unwound a napkin folded around an egg that was probably meant to be boiled, but—alas!—was not cooked at all), and she never gave John an extra piece of cake, the way Molly so often did. Sherlock was hard on Molly, though never outright unkind, because he thought she let the maids get away with too much, and that she wasn’t up to her job. Without her, though, it was as if the light had been drained out of the days. The staff was grumpy and its work was disjointed, always running late or missing some important element—enough hot water for the laundry, the second-best set of silverware for the dining table, a vase for Madame’s roses. And, of course, there was this problem of the lunch buckets.

John settled under a tree, with a pleasing view of the house, and discovered his lunch was a flabby chicken thigh left over from the previous night’s supper, a generous chunk of melon, and a piece of newspaper folded again and again in triangles, with numbers and names etched in different places: a fortune-teller. Margaret and the other youngsters must have been consulting it to discover who each would marry, how many babies would come, whether they’d live in the country or in town or in some far-flung, exotic place like Greece or America. John would return it to her at supper; for the time being he laid it on the grass beside him.

After he’d eaten his lunch, John wiped his hands with a clean part of his shirt (there weren’t many; he’d spent all morning in the kitchen garden spreading manure and food scraps, then picking worms off the tomato plants before they got any big ideas). He withdrew Sherlock’s latest letter from his breast pocket, blew across the envelope to remove some clinging dirt from its surface. Gingerly, almost reverently, he drew the letter out and coaxed it open. Sherlock’s orderly, beautiful handwriting covered nearly three pages and John nested them together, then shuffled them one behind the other, his gaze scanning each page intensely, until they were back in proper order. Sherlock numbered each sheet at the bottom, in the center: _-1-, -2-, -3-._

The flourish of Sherlock’s “S” reminded John of the waves of Sherlock’s hair escaping from the careful application of pomade that held it safely in place, swerving up and away from his forehead, throughout the day. Long after dark, though, when Sherlock lay in bed wearing a different, more open face, his hair spilled in unruly curls across his forehead, over the tops of his ears, and this was pure proof that John had loved him so thoroughly that Sherlock had come undone, which was all John lived for anymore.

He folded up the letter, returned it to his pocket, tilted his head back against the trunk of the tree and let his eyes fall closed for a few minutes, but did not allow himself to drift off even though time passed quickest when he was asleep. John fished his sketchbook from his pocket. It was too early to mark off the day yet; he’d do that after supper. Thirty-eight more nights before John would see those sweat-dampened, dark curls again.

He tucked the fortune-teller into his little book beside a drawing he’d made of Sherlock’s calf and ankle, then readied himself to return to his work.

*

John sucked so hard on his lip that Sherlock pushed him gently away.

“You’ll leave a mark I’ll have to explain later,” he scolded.

“Good,” John replied, his fingers working furiously at Sherlock’s shirt buttons, his gaze shifting back and forth between Sherlock’s angular face and his own scrabbling fingers. “Then the whole world will see how I adore you.”

Sherlock’s eyes closed in an expression of vague embarrassment mixed half-and-half with utter delight; it was an expression John recognized, and often endeavoured to elicit from him.

More buttons beneath the shirt front, then at last the slender, pale chest, and John leaned to inhale the scent of Sherlock’s body, press the tip of his tongue against Sherlock’s nipple. John kissed his way up Sherlock’s chest to his throat, slid his hands behind Sherlock’s neck to stroke upward through his hair. He closed his lips tight around a spot at the base of Sherlock’s throat and began to suck.

“Stop, now,” Sherlock intoned, but there was nothing in it. He was rucking up the back of John’s shirt, reaching beneath to stroke the skin of his back, slide his fingertips under the waistband of John’s trousers.

John stopped long enough to whisper, “The whole world will be jealous. And well they should be.” Then he returned to the same spot and drew harder against it, imagining he could hear the tiny pop of capillaries breaking, smell the coppery scent of Sherlock’s blood pooling beneath the skin.

Sherlock’s deft hands moved around to the front placket of John’s trousers and went to work unfastening them. John leaned back to examine his handiwork: a dark pink, near-perfect circle, shimmering with John’s left-behind saliva, here and there already turning dusky purple.

“Your collar will cover it,” John assured, grinning, reaching for Sherlock’s trousers-front. He tilted his chin up and found Sherlock’s plush lips, stroked his tongue across them and dipped it between them, teasing the tip of Sherlock’s tongue with his own. “Quick, now, Precious,” John murmured. “I want to have you in a hurry so I can have you again before I slink back into the night.”

Sherlock gasped mildly, and they kissed, and reached inside each other’s clothes, and with warm hands coaxed each other fully to life. Soon they were both panting heavy breaths against each other’s cheeks and chins and ears, now and again raising their palms and fingertips to their mouths to wet them, each stroking the other in ways he had by now learned would bring his lover quickly to the brink, and over it. They leaned chest to chest, shoulders heaving, catching their breath, moaning pleasure and desire, and soon enough they were both weak-kneed and gasping, licking fresh moisture onto each other’s dry lips.

“My treasure. . .” John whispered. “You are the _most_ impossible thing. How did I ever find you?”

Sherlock only sighed contentedly, and suggested without words that they both finish undressing. Once they had, he guided John to the bed where they lay in a contented tangle, exchanging little kisses, petting each other.

“You won’t let me stay. . .” John ventured. He had mostly stopped hoping that Sherlock might let him stay the night; Sherlock was adamant that no one should ever see John emerging from his bedroom in the morning, though John was convinced the whole house must realise by now that the two were lovers. John, for his part, made little effort to be discreet about his rampant adoration of Sherlock, but knowing how highly Sherlock regarded propriety and genteel manners, John followed his lead in keeping their affair at least mostly-secret.

Sherlock sighed mightily. “You are remarkably persistent, John.”

“I want your beautiful, perfect face to be the first thing I see when I open my eyes.”

“I’m sorry. It’s out of the question.”

John rubbed the tip of his nose across Sherlock’s jaw. “I know. But I won’t stop asking.”

Sherlock’s voice was a low rumble. “Tell me something you’ve never told me before,” he prompted.

John thought this over. “Hmm. . .” Sherlock kissed his forehead and started to unwind himself from John’s embrace; John held on.

“Pipe,” he explained, and John let him go.

“When I was a little sprout—six. . .maybe seven, I think—I had a fever that nearly killed me.”

Sherlock returned to the bed with his pipe clenched in his teeth, a tin of tobacco and box of wooden matches in one hand. He raised an eyebrow questioningly as he resumed his place beside John, who propped up a pillow for him to lean back on.

“Two things came of it. The first is that my mother was never the same after; she turned jittery and fragile. She was my shadow for years, afraid to lose me around a corner. It was oppressive and I finally left home to work, when I was thirteen, just to be away from her.”

“Thirteen,” Sherlock echoed, between puffs on the pipe to get it going. “Lazy boy. I came to work at Stonefield at eight.”

“Not quite the same, I don’t think,” John said gently. “I went to my grand-dad’s farm in Sussex. It wasn’t until much later, maybe even when Jane and I lost our own little fella in the winter of ’14, that I understood my mother. For a long time I just resented her always hovering over me, when other boys’ mums waved them goodbye every morning and didn’t see them again until supper. Now I know it was only that she was afraid. Wish I’d had a chance to apologize to her, before she died.”

Sherlock hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t imagine mothers hold grudges against their children.”

John smiled; Sherlock’s kindnesses were of the sort that could be missed if one didn’t know what to look for.

“No, you’re probably right.”

“You said two things came of it.” There was a silvery swirl hovering around Sherlock’s head and tiny lines around his eyes that only showed themselves while he smoked.

“Oh, right. Well. In the midst of my fever I had this sort of. . .vision,” John said hesitantly. “I saw myself much later, in the war. Being shot.” John tapped the ragged scar high on the left side of his chest in front of his shoulder.

Sherlock was silent for a long moment. “Maybe you shouldn’t have volunteered,” he offered, at last. There was a quiet pause and they both burst out laughing, then shushed each other, then laughed more, burying their faces in each other’s shoulders, the bedclothes, the pillows, to stifle the noise.

Sherlock set his pipe aside on the little bedside table, rearranged his long limbs and leaned down to swipe his tongue across John’s scar; John sucked in a hissing breath. Sherlock pressed his lips to it and John’s fingers raked through Sherlock’s hair, loosening the last holdouts from their fixed, formal arrangement and twining thick curls around his fingertips.

“Jesus, how I’ll miss you,” John whispered, and his voice caught on a sudden lump in his throat, which he instantly tried to clear away.

“Hush, now,” Sherlock urged, quietly, and reached over to turn down the lamp. “Let’s not think about it.” He pressed a trail of kisses down John’s chest, across his belly, Sherlock’s long-fingered hands trailing behind, dragging along the surface of John’s body, which quivered and shuddered beneath his touch.

John rested his palm on the side of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock looked up along the length of John’s torso and smiled softly at him.

They loved each other slowly and in great detail, as if they had all the time in the world.


	3. Flowers, Rain, A Blessing

_16 th August_

_My dear Watson,_

_I sincerely hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_I cannot help but wonder why I have not yet received a letter from you. Almost undoubtedly, it is the fault of the French postal service, which one assumes to be as laissez-faire and unserious as the rest of the culture. I understand better with each passing day why my grandfather smuggled his bride off the continent, and particularly out of France. My grandmother was nonetheless barely tamed, but one can only imagine how things might have played out had he put down roots here. Doubtless, the Holmes family would by now be full not of upright, erudite, loyal subjects of the English crown, but rather a mad bunch of stage actors or ragtime musicians, or something equally disreputable. Such is the influence of the layabout, hedonistic, French approach to life. At least as far as I can tell._

_On the topic of disreputable behavior, Miss Hooper daily shames herself by her ludicrous and overt flirtation with the young owner of the local flower shop (how I miss the ease of requesting that you bring in cut flowers from Stonefield’s gardens—the daily task of balancing Madame’s need for something beautiful upon which to rest her eye against the budget for such non-essentials is tedious beyond measure). Yesterday I walked out with Miss Hooper, in order to settle the week’s bills at the florist and butcher, and found her barely recognizable once we stepped inside the flower shop—giddy, smiling with too many teeth over the flower-man’s insipid puns, immoderately resting her hand on his forearm. If I thought her unserious before, dear god, Watson, now she makes herself perfectly ridiculous. And why? To win the affection of a man probably not even worthy of her. (He is French, after all, and bound to be of low morals.)_

_I have been persuaded by the lady of the house that I must visit the Louvre this coming Sunday afternoon. From what I understand there was a gift made to the museum of a sizable collection of English paintings, and as I find myself a bit melancholic for home, perhaps if I seek out those particular works, the visit will be made at least tolerable._

_I admit—to you alone—that I find myself quite lonesome, of an evening after supper with my pipe, without your companionship. My own thoughts are sometimes not quite enough to distract me. And anyway, most of my thoughts are of the times I spent with you, and of our special bond of friendship. And now I sound like a soft-hearted fool, so I will finish._

_You are never far from my thoughts, Watson. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. I wonder, is it the same for you?_

_Warmly,_

_S. Holmes_

It was raining horrendously, lightning streaking the sky in wide, white shocks, followed by deafening thunder that rattled the glass in the windows. John had watched the thunderhead roll in over the course of only ten or twenty minutes, the clear blue sky rapidly overtaken by dim grey. Once the first fat drops of rain began to splat down onto the wide brim of his straw hat, there was barely a moment before it was coming down by the bucketful. John had been raking up deadfall from beneath some hedges, and the nearest shelter was the house, so he ran to it and ducked in the kitchen door.

“Cats and dogs out there, what, John?” the cook asked as he came in. She was kneading bread with fingers so thick and doughy and covered in flour it was hard to discern where she ended and the bread began. Her wide, cheerful face was red with exertion, and she had the butt of a cigar clenched between her teeth.

“Indeed, Mrs Wood,” he agreed. “You know, Mr Holmes’d have you if he knew you were smoking while you work.”

She gave him a wink. “Mr Holmes ain’t ‘ere, though, is ‘e? Let an old lady to ‘er vices, would you, John? I ain’t got too many years left to enjoy’m.”

John grinned. “Ah, now. You’ll outlive us all, I reckon.” He cast a glance around. “You’ll excuse me a few minutes?” John nodded toward the hallway leading to the water closet.

“’Course, dear.” She went back to her kneading and John turned the corner and went down the short hallway. Once he was out of sight of the kitchen, he pulled Sherlock’s latest letter from his breast pocket, checked to make sure it hadn’t gotten wet. There was one damp spot on the corner of the envelope, but none of the ink had gotten smudged, much to John’s relief.

At the end of the corridor, a few steps up, and here was the door to Sherlock’s room. John tried the knob though he knew it was locked, and let his hand rest there upon it as he leaned his forehead against the raised wood door panels. His eyes fell closed and he breathed deep into his belly, then sighed out the breath through his nose. Could he smell a lingering memory of Sherlock’s pipe tobacco? More likely he imagined so. John glanced down at his hand on the knob, could see in his mind’s eye the precise way Sherlock fished the key from inside his coat, fitted it into the lock and turned both key and knob together, then pushed open the door and stood aside to let John pass into the room ahead of him. Sherlock’s eyes sparkled with something as near as Sherlock ever got to mischief when John’s shoulder inevitably brushed against his chest in the narrow stairwell.

John turned, stepped down, sank heavily to sit on the top tread. He withdrew his sketchbook from his pocket, thumbed past a drawing he’d made the previous evening, of Sherlock’s neck and jaw—no necktie, no collar, unbound, John thrilled to see it—all the way back to the little calendar he’d made. He didn’t need to count, he knew it off by heart, but he counted nonetheless. He lay Sherlock’s latest letter between the pages of the book, turned back to look again at his drawing of Sherlock’s long, pale neck.

John considered penciling in the love-bite he’d left on him; he knew that in reality, it had probably faded away by now. It nonetheless pleased him to think that Sherlock would have seen it every morning while he shaved, and John wondered if Sherlock was similarly consumed with memories of their time together in Sherlock’s room, in the narrow bed John now thought of as theirs, while the rest of the house was asleep.

Thirty-one more nights without Sherlock beside him, beneath him, in his arms, in their bed. John felt suddenly very tired, and found it difficult to get back on his feet.

*

Sherlock’s face in the dim lamplight was all shadow and sharp edges, his wide black pupils ringed by his ice-and-snow irises, his lips kiss-swollen. His gaze followed John as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, reached to the floor to reclaim his clothes. It was just after midnight.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said then, and it was unlike all his other apologies for John having to leave in the middle of the night. This time, when Sherlock said, “I’m sorry,” there was pain in it, and something like pleading.

John turned, his crumpled pile of clothes in his lap, and laid his hand on Sherlock’s jaw, stroked his thumb back and forth across Sherlock’s cheek.

“Nevermind it,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

“I’m not ashamed.” Sherlock’s eyes were wide, fixed on John’s.

John leaned to kiss his temple, smoothed aside a wavy lock of his hair to kiss his forehead.

“Even a minute with you is better than nothing,” John said. “An hour is a blessing. A whole evening—“ John ran his hand down Sherlock’s chest, rested it on the jut of his hip. “—is a dream.” He found Sherlock’s wrist, drew it up to his lips and kissed the base of Sherlock’s thumb. “Nevermind,” he said again. “Maybe someday.”

Sherlock’s mouth crumpled: a small, broken sort of smile.

“You know I’m your slave, my own one,” John whispered against Sherlock’s fingertips. “Anything you ask of me.” He drew the tip of Sherlock’s ring finger into his mouth, circled it with the tip of his tongue. “My heart.”

Sherlock stroked one slim fingertip up the side of John’s torso.

“Just lie here with me a bit longer,” Sherlock said quietly.

John let his rumpled bundle of clothes fall back to the floor, stretched out on the bed, drew Sherlock under his arm, tucked Sherlock’s head under his chin, cradling him.

When Sherlock fell asleep, John dressed, snuffed the lamp, quietly closed the door behind him.


	4. Entwined

_20 th August_

_My dear Watson,_

_Contrary to rumours, some French postcards picture only city-streets scenes, as on the reverse.  Of the other sort, I have found no evidence—though there hangs a drape behind the tobacconist’s counter which makes one wonder. I write to you from my room, two streets away from the far right of this photo. Study it closely and you will spot something très intéressant, which puts me in mind of our friendship. The days are far too many until I am home._

_Fondly,_

_SH_

John was outside the kitchen, washing his hands under the cold spigot that he used to fill his watering cans, about to claim his lunch. Margaret appeared in the kitchen door, left open for whatever breeze might feebly stumble past by accident. She called out a _Hallo_ , and just as John was about to reply, he heard distantly behind him the answering call of one of the stablemen. John glanced over his shoulder at the man, who he knew was named Jones, was Welsh, and was the senior man in the stables. John shook water from his hands, made his way up the stone path.

“You’re friendly with Jones, Margaret?” he asked her, forcing a casualness he did not feel in his unease, for Margaret was a newly-fourteen-year-old naïf, and Jones must be near thirty, and had a reputation as a bit of a scoundrel. Margaret’s face was alarmingly pink, her eyes full of stars.

“We chat sometimes when I go down to see the yearlings,” she replied, ducking her head a bit, avoiding John’s gaze. “He’s very kind, and doesn’t smoke,” she added.

“Ah, well,” John said with a grin. “In that case.” He turned his attention to the lunch buckets lined up on the wooden table. “Any idea which of these has an entire dinner in it?” he asked, leaving aside the subject of Jones the stableman for the time being; he’d keep alert to that situation but for now, he could let it go. It was probably just that Margaret had her first romantic crush, in which case she could be left to it and it would pass soon enough.

“That’s very cruel of you, joking like that about these nice dinners I’ve made,” Margaret scolded, but she was smiling.

“This girl’s 'ead's in the clouds, innit, John,” put in Mrs Wood, the cook, shaking a wooden spoon in Margaret’s direction. “Same as ‘em all.”

“We were all young once, Mrs Wood.”

“Who was? Not I!” she protested, and shifted the stump of her cigar from one corner of her mouth to the other. She stomped off down the cellar steps.

John took his chances with the first lunch he came to.

“Mr Watson,” Margaret said quietly, casting a quick glance around to assure they were alone. “I’d a letter from Miss Hooper this morning.”

“Did you?” John smiled. “I hope she’s well.”

“She seemed so,” Margaret allowed.

John pulled from his hip pocket his little sketchbook and drew out from between its pages the picture-postcard from Sherlock. “This came today, too,” he said, “From Mr Holmes.” Margaret studied the picture briefly.

“It looks quite busy, doesn’t it?” she offered. “So many people, the trolley. This must be a picture of the high street—all these shops.”

“I imagine so,” John said, and tucked the card back in the book, the book back in his pocket.

“Miss Hooper suggested in her letter. . .” Margaret began. She bit her lip. John looked at her expectantly. “If you need any help, sir. . .” She bit at the corner of her thumbnail. “With anything. I’m happy to.” She smiled, awkwardly. “Help.”

John was puzzled. “Help me?” he echoed, then chuckled. “Whatever could Molly be thinking? It’s hot, dirty work outdoors in the sun. . .certainly if I needed help, you’d be the last person I’d ask, my dear young Margaret.”

Margaret’s cheeks were flushing and she looked ready to flee. “Of course. It’s only that Miss Hooper thought you might need me.”

John shook his head. “I thank you and Miss Hooper both for the concern,” he said. “But nevermind the gardens; you keep to the dusting. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day.”

“And you, Mr Watson.” Margaret scurried off, as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. John, baffled, shrugged and headed back outside to have his lunch under a tree.

He found a fist-sized stone and arranged his postcard from Sherlock propped up against it, studied the photo of the Paris street scene as if he would spot something familiar—a shop door he recognized, one of the family’s automobiles, or Sherlock’s serious face among the crowd (would he be wearing a hat? John squinted harder)—and suddenly he was choking on his corned beef, coughing up crumbs, wiping his lips on his shirtsleeve.

He raised the card close to his face, stared hard. It couldn’t be. But even after a hard blink to clear his eyes, there it was. In the center of the scene, where a crowd of people strolled, sat at café tables, waited for the trolley to stop, John spied two lovers in an embrace, their arms about each other’s shoulders and waists, their heads tilted together so that the brim of a hat hid their kiss from the photographer’s prying eye. . .and they were both men!

John was stunned. Could it be that such a thing could happen in daylight, on a city thoroughfare, in a photograph? It seemed impossible, yet the longer John stared, the less able he was to convince himself he was mistaken. Sherlock had complained that Paris was a stew-pot of decadence: loose women, drunkards, gamblers, all manner of low people running the streets. A city with no conscience, no sense of propriety. John laughed out loud, pressed the card to his chest. If Paris were a place where a camera’s shutter snapped closed around an image like this, and no one came away bloodied, John thought it must be a most wonderful place, indeed.

It would be twenty-eight more nights before he and Sherlock could look together at this picture, this _remarkable_ picture of two men, like them, who loved each other.

*

Chest to chest, raised knees entangled, stroking each other, kissing the sweat from each other’s upper lips, inhaling the scent of each other’s hair, gasping breaths and humming sounds filled with desperation and desire.

“My god,” John murmured against Sherlock’s neck. “Sherlock, my own. . .”

He leaned away to take him in; Sherlock looked nearly delirious. John’s hand made a cunning movement and Sherlock let go a sob of pleasure.

“John,” he whined, and the sound of it was so exquisite it nearly did John in, on the spot. “I. . .oh. . .” Sherlock rocked his hips up to meet John’s hand, shifted his whole body closer, his arm beneath John’s neck winding tighter around the back of his shoulders, pulling John in toward him. “I wish I could. . .” John kept up a steady pace, Sherlock was unraveling. “I want to _have_ you,” Sherlock muttered, “I wish I could have you. . . _ah!_. . .inside me. . .”

At that, John was utterly, instantly done for; he stifled a shout against the side of Sherlock’s throat, spilling across Sherlock’s improbably long hand, the knobs of his knuckles.

“Jesus,” John gasped out, “You beauty.” He could feel Sherlock swelling against him, closed his fingers a bit, and Sherlock heaved a deep, delicious sigh and was finished. John sucked Sherlock’s bottom lip into his mouth and pulled, then coaxed Sherlock’s lips apart to taste his tongue. As they both floated in the haze, John kissed his way to Sherlock’s ear, whispered, “I could be, you know.  . .Don’t you?. . .You know I could be inside you.”

Sherlock hummed: sleepy, blissful. Curious.

John whispered, “You don’t know?” and slid his hand around from the front of Sherlock’s pelvis, to his low back, slid two slick-sticky fingers down along the cleft of his backside. Sherlock became very still; John could feel him waiting. John pressed two fingertips against Sherlock, firmly, communicating—but not acting on—the intention. Sherlock gasped, drew his head back to meet John’s gaze.

“No!” he whispered, incredulous. His eyes were like saucers.

John couldn’t help smiling, though he refused to laugh, lest Sherlock think he was mocking him. He moved his hand back to rest on Sherlock’s hip.

“You never. . .?” John started. “In a book, maybe?”

“What sort of books do you think I read?” Sherlock asked. His face was a glorious blend of scandalized and tantalized. John was utterly delighted. His buttoned-up, learned Sherlock. . .an innocent.

“Or with. . .” John began again. “Someone?”

Sherlock shook his head. John couldn’t help but embrace him, kiss him, he was so sweet and he looked so shocked.

“Is it even possible?” Sherlock murmured.

John laughed a little—he couldn’t help it—but recovered quickly. “I assure you,” he intoned, “It’s possible.”

Sherlock was quiet. John kissed his forehead, his temple, his jaw. “You perfect treasure,” John murmured. “Only what you want. Anything you want.” John leaned back, swept Sherlock’s unruly, perspiration-dampened fringe back from his forehead. “You angel.” Sherlock closed his eyes; his forehead was lightly creased.

“Are you _sure_?” he asked, in an amusing, upward-inflected whisper so unlike his usual no-nonsense tone.

“I’m sure.”

“Hmh.”

John mopped them both up with a corner of the bedclothes, left Sherlock to his thoughts for a few moments.

“I’ve never seen you left speechless,” John said, settling in beside Sherlock, who now lay on his back staring at the ceiling. “Thought you knew everything there was to know.”

“Apparently my education is lacking.” A half-smile played on his lips. “It’s intriguing. A little terrifying, if I’m honest.”

John grinned, stroked the rough tips of his fingers over Sherlock’s pectoral muscles, circled his nipple and made it respond, even without touching it.

“Exciting,” Sherlock added.

John nodded smiling agreement. Sherlock reached behind John’s head, pulled him down into a deep kiss.


	5. The Bitter Taste of Leaves

_24 th August_

_My dearest John,_

_I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_My spirits are very poor, still having received no letters from you. As Miss Hooper has received notes from young Margaret—which she assures me indicate mail sent to Stonefield has arrived in good order—I feel certain you must have received at least one of my letters. I admit I am at pains to understand why you have not reciprocated. You need not worry about the content, I would be pleased even to hear that life at Stonefield is unchanged in my absence (indeed, it would come as a great relief, as I feel sure that the staff take great liberties when I am not there to oversee them). I assure you that I treasure our special friendship as wholly as I ever have, my dearest, my only friend, and to go nearly a month without word from you is proving unbearable to me. Please send your reassurance that our bond has not been worn threadbare by the grinding mechanisms of time and distance._

_Now I must account to you, begging a solemn oath that you will never repeat the tale, the remarkable events of last evening._

_Miss Hooper was invited by the man at the flower shop, whose name I have since come to know is Etienne, to dine with him at a supper club a few doors down from his shop. Naturally I insisted I go as her chaperone; an unmarried Englishwoman, out at night in the city, would give a terrible impression. And as you know, for all her faults, I do consider Miss Hooper to be a good and upright woman, and would not want her reputation to be in the least called into question. Hence it was the three of us, joined by three other friends of our host: two well-dressed young men and a handsome woman in a fox stole. It was quite moth-eaten and I can only assume it was secondhand._

_There followed dreadfully dull conversation, the topics of which I am at pains to remember. Our companions gave an impression of delight that I am fluent in French, however I could not find it in myself to carry on a conversation in which Miss Hooper could take no part, and so we carried on in English (which was tortured by our tablemates until it begged for mercy). The aperitif was red lillet, and I rate it among the best I have tasted._

_Dinner wore on (the food was more of what “Chef” prepares, only with more salt), and it seemed there was no limit to the number of bottles of wine our hosts would call for. Miss Hooper, clearly out of her depth, attempted to match the consumption of the other lady at our table—who must have been twice Miss Hooper’s size—and as such, Molly became quite silly and leaned all about with her elbows on the table in a most un-charming manner. Dessert was some overly-sculpted thing in an unnatural shade of pink; I left it._

_Once we had been served brandies (not awful), the lights dimmed and a small band took to the stage, making a clamouring racket which impelled a few couples toward a central dance floor. I don’t mind telling you, John, I checked my watch quite indiscreetly, and once even yawned, readying an excuse for me to take Miss Hooper home. Her supposed escort, this Etienne the florist, barely looked at her the whole evening, though she took every opportunity to lay her hand on his wrist, or to bat her eyelashes at him. The band’s first tune had not yet ended when I became aware that Etienne’s hand was beneath the table—and it came to rest on my knee! I was shocked, of course, but with no great fuss (for why should Miss Hooper have to be confronted with the fact she has once again chosen an utterly wrong object for her clumsy affection?), I removed his hand from my knee, and under my breath told him in his native tongue that his advance was most unwelcome. He quietly apologized, and it was only a matter of minutes before I excused myself, and steered Miss Hooper toward home. The cheeky beast threw me a wink and a little moue of his mouth as I left!_

_You can see why such a story must be kept close to your chest, John, and perhaps you should burn this letter. But I had to share the tale with you, for who else would I tell it to? In the end, the whole business only left me feeling more lonesome than ever for your company; I promise never again to chide you for drinking your tea from your saucer. Drink it from your shoe, only let me sit beside you while you do it._

_I am now at least partly convinced our hard-drinking, fox-stole-wearing dinner companion was perhaps not a woman at all. Paris is a cesspool._

_You are never far from my thoughts, my dearest John. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. Please let me know you have not forgotten me, nor doubt the sincerity of my affection._

_Affectueusement,_

_SH_

The slant of light through the window let John know even before he checked the little clock on his nightstand that he had overslept. The cottage was quiet, empty, the three other men who bunked there having long ago gone out to muck the horse stalls, tinker with the auto engines, or whitewash the miles of fence beyond the meadows. The momentary panic of waking so late subsided, and John turned over, watched dust motes floating in the shaft of sunlight, sparkling and dancing, something hypnotic and magical in something so common.

When he turned his head, he heard the vague crinkle of paper: Sherlock’s letters under his pillow. He rolled his neck and listened, _krik-fit, krik-fit, krik._ Sherlock’s words, all for him. Proof that Sherlock missed him. When he had opened Sherlock’s most recent and longest letter, John discovered several tiny leaves of tobacco were tucked into the creases. John gathered them up by sticking them to his finger— _tap, tap, tap_ —and then put them on the tip of his tongue. They were bitter and numbed his tongue, but there was a vague flavour to them, the scent of Sherlock’s pipe, which was one of many of Sherlock’s scents by which John was bewitched.

Behind his closed eyes, John could clearly envision Sherlock smoking at the supper table after everyone else had gone, collar loose and shirtsleeves rolled up. The soporific way the smoke from his pipe stroked Sherlock’s face in big lazy rings, as if it, too, loved him and recognized that he was beautiful—the _most_ beautiful thing. John’s hand drifted down toward the rapidly solidifying evidence of Sherlock’s intense beauty, and opened his fly. A brief trip to his mouth to slick his palm, then back down again, and soon enough he was panting, echoes in his head of Sherlock’s deep, serious voice; the desperate, gorgeous sounds Sherlock uttered in the dark of night.

_John. . .my John. . .my dearest John. . .my dearest. . ._

In no time at all, John was shuddering, one leg tangled in the bed sheet, two fingers pinching at his nipple, and all at once he missed Sherlock more profoundly than ever.

Twenty-three nights had never seemed so like an eternity.

*

Sherlock appeared in the hothouse, which was not so called without reason, and immediately there was a sheen of perspiration on his upper lip and forehead. He reached into his coat for his handkerchief and dabbed at his face.

“What are you--?” John started, and tried to steer Sherlock by the elbow back into the garden. “I don’t spend an unnecessary second in here, nor should you.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Sherlock said quietly, refusing to be moved. He laid the long palm of one hand on John’s forearm. John looked up at him, eyebrows raised, expectant.

Sherlock cleared his throat— _ahuh-hmmph_ —and looked deadly serious, straight into John’s eyes. “Even more than being away from Stonefield,” he went on, “And even more than leaving the staff to their own devices. . .”

John kept silent, waited.

“I worry most about whether you will still love me by the time I return.”

He clasped his hands behind his straight, upright back. He looked past John’s shoulder, staring intently at nothing in particular.

“My own Sherlock Holmes,” John said, and tucked two fingers behind Sherlock’s coat lapel, brushing his thumb across the rosebud buttonhole he’d laid on the kitchen table for Sherlock to find that morning. “You are the reason I breathe. And I could no more stop loving you than the sky could fall.”

Sherlock met John’s eyes, and smiled.


	6. An Ice-Addled Heart

_1 st September_

_My dearest John,_

_It is my sincere hope that this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_Daily my fear grows that you have lost affection for me in my absence. I promise I would not have left Stonefield Hall—nor you—given any chance not to go. My commitment to an excellent standard of quality in the work to which I am wed prevented me from protesting; certainly as a former soldier, you understand implicitly that when duty calls, one must report. Nonetheless, I can’t but wonder if you were so incensed by my leaving that it hardened your heart toward me. The nights are endless without you by my side; I smoke alone, drink my tea alone, retreat at last to my cold, lonely bed where my sleep—when it comes—is very troubled._

_I worry for your health: that you may have had an accident with some sharp garden implement, or gone down with a fever, or that some other calamity has befallen you—for what else could keep you from sending me a token of the affection so freely given, almost since first we met? My dearest John, if I have done a single thing to offend you or to alienate your affection, I lie prostrate at your feet now in supplication, begging forgiveness. Only a damned fool would be so unkind to one whose heart is worn so freely on his sleeve, and whose quick smile can melt even the most ice-addled heart. I know I am, indeed, such a fool, but god knows I have tried to be the very best and truest friend to you. Any offense I have committed was, I strenuously assure you, without intent._

_I cannot but continue to beg that you send a reply, even if it is to rescind your prior promises of enduring affection. Meantime, I lose sleep with worry for your safety, and move through the days with shattered nerves as I search vainly for any memory of a slight against you, so that I may immediately and fully make my amends. For you are the finest man I have ever known, and deserve no less than the best of me._

_You are never far from my thoughts, my dearest John. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. I know these words are but a standard farewell, but please know that they speak truthfully of what is in my heart, which suffers an unending stab of longing to be back with you. Were it in my power to make the time pass more quickly, I would make it pass in half an instant._

_Lovingly,_

_Sherlock_

Supper was a cold salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, thick slices of two-days-old bread, and lemonade in glasses full of chipped ice. The staff was lethargic and tetchy in the heat. Even as the sun was beginning to set, there was still no breeze, nor any cloud on the horizon with a promise of rain. John had spent the afternoon pruning a brambly blackberry bush that threatened to take over the entire south lawn, and so his hands, arms, and even his face were a stinging riot of pinpricks and small gashes. He kept his eyes on his plate and tried to tune out the conversation at the table. The second he’d finished eating, he planned to have a bath and perhaps fall asleep in the rocker on the front porch of the cottage. The day was blazing, endless, and he’d had his fill.

One of the footmen made a sideways, bawdy comment about the heat as it related to the fit of the maid’s corsets. Half the junior staff looked embarrassed, and half nearly shrieked with laughter.

“That’s enough outta you youngsters,” the cook scolded. She turned her head to face the row of maids seated across from John and the footmen, and said directly, “Behave like ladies.” The same footman who’d made the original joke said something about the buttons at Margaret’s neck, and she looked stricken, biting her lip and covering her blushing face with her napkin.

John’s fist crashed down on the table, making the settings near him jump. Two of the maids scuttled from their chairs to Margaret’s side, and ushered her away from the table and out of the kitchen, alternately whispering soothing words in her ear and staring daggers at the footman.

“What would make you think, Thomas,” John thundered, “That such conversation is welcome at this table?”

“Sorry, Watson, I was only joking.” Thomas looked at his supper, not at John.

“In the presence of ladies, no less,” John went on. “You’re well out of line. You shame yourself with such stupid jokes. That is not the sort of house Mr Holmes runs.”

“Mr Holmes ain’t running the house at the moment, though, is he?”

John got to his feet so fast his chair fell over. The maids cringed; the footmen’s chests puffed up, but none of them stood. John’s fists were balled tight at his sides.

“I advise you most strenuously, Thomas,” John said through clenched teeth, “that if you value your position—and your teeth—you will respect Mr Holmes in his absence just as you would if he were here.” The footmen exchanged meaningful glances; the cook looked at her plate. “In the meantime, you owe the ladies present an apology.”

“I apologize, Mrs Wood—ladies—if I was offensive,” the footman said, though grudgingly.

John stomped out of the kitchen without another word.

*

John leaned up on his elbow, keeping Sherlock grounded with one hand curved around the top of his head, cradling him; his other hand was between Sherlock’s pushed-back thighs, two slick fingers slowly rocking. Sherlock’s hands rested on John’s low back, and his eyes were half-closed, his tongue now and again darting out to moisten lips made dry by his heaving breath. Now and then John ducked his head down to kiss him, chasing the tip of Sherlock’s tongue as it disappeared back into his mouth.

“All right?” John whispered.

Sherlock nodded lazily. “Yes, just—“ he let out a held breath, “Wait.”

John stilled himself.

After a few pregnant moments, Sherlock licked his lips, sighed.

“Still all right? We don’t have to—“ John kissed Sherlock between his eyelid and his brow.

“It’s good,” Sherlock said. “And you want to.”

“I want,” John whispered, “whatever takes your breath away.” Sherlock reached down between their bodies, guided John’s wrist. Once a rhythm was established, Sherlock took himself in hand, and they moved together, panting, kissing . . . John’s eyes searched Sherlock’s face for any sign he should stop, but every breath, every expression only urged him on, until Sherlock shuddered, and gasped, and his fingertips dug into John’s back, and John watched his exquisite face tense and tighten and then all at once soften, his eyelids dusky and his long neck flushed pink.

Sherlock touched John’s wrist and he withdrew, smoothing his lips across Sherlock’s jaw. When his open mouth landed on Sherlock’s sensuous bottom lip—that lip that drove John to distraction—he reached down to please himself, and Sherlock covered John’s hand with his own, and whispered in his ear, “My dearest. . .” and John’s pace quickened, and Sherlock stayed with him, and Sherlock whispered, “It’s only you that takes my breath,” and John nearly choked on a lump in his throat as he shivered and groaned and at last fell limp across Sherlock’s chest.

John rearranged their limbs, maneuvered himself to hear the thumping in Sherlock’s chest, first quite hard and fast, but slowing as he calmed.

“It’s my heart in there,” John said, and his eyes stung hot and he hated himself for it. “You’re going away with my heart.”


	7. Your Heart, My Life

_8 th September_

_My dearest John,_

_It is my sincere hope that this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

_Miss Hooper has at last given up her pursuit of Etienne the florist, after stumbling upon him (from what I could discern through her excessive sobbing while recounting the event) intimately exchanging cigarillo smoke with another man in a most vulgar manner, in plain view of any customer who had misfortune to enter his shop at that moment. Would it had been any other than our Molly; she has become morose and sleepwalks through the days, her lowly countenance yet another weight upon me as I endure this final fortnight before I am at last home at Stonefield. I pray you will welcome me back._

_Madame hosted dinner for twelve last night; she thanked me quite effusively when it was over. I assured her it was my pleasure, and so it was—assuring the smooth run of the house through such an event distracted me from the enduring agony of being so long away from you, the only person in the world who has ever professed to love me. Perhaps you suddenly realised you had been mistaken in your impression of me as someone worthy of admiration and affection? Trust me when I tell you, John, that you would not be the first._

_Did I only dream you loved me? If that be the case, pray let me go back to sleep forever, for it was the most wonderful dream I have ever had._

_You are never far from my thoughts, my dearest John. I hold dear the fond memories of time passed in your company, and long to see you again. The heart in my chest, which you claim is your own, aches and aches, only more every hour that I am apart from you. I wonder: do you feel it, too?_

_Lovingly,_

_Sherlock_

“You bastard, let go!” John grunted, both hands wrapped around a chunk of root; he was to transfer the small apple trees that lined the front walkway into pots, to winter-over in the conservatory. His face was dirt- and sweat-streaked, and he’d torn a callous on one thumb which was now stinging, bleeding, and wrapped in a bandage improvised from one of his old socks. “Blast it, don’t make me angry—you know I’ve killed before!”

“Mr Watson?”

Margaret’s voice, sounding alarmed. John glanced over his shoulder, both hands still wrapped around the root.

“Ah, hello, Margaret. Forgive my colourful language; this fella’s got a mind he’s going to beat me at my own game.”

Margaret’s eyebrows went up and toward each other; her mouth twisted into a sort-of-smile.

“Nevermind him. What can I— _argh!_ —do for you?” He went on pulling.

“I’ve a letter from Miss Hooper, and she folded in a note for you, as well.” She waved a little card bearing Molly’s monogram.

“Oh, well, that’s— _erg!_ —nice. Maybe you’ll read it out to me? I’m a bit— _ehrh!—_ involved at the moment.”

“I’m happy to,” Margaret said quickly, and turned the card over. “’My dear John’—that’s Miss Hooper talking there, Mr Watson; I wouldn’t presume—“

“Yes, I know. You’re all right, Margaret. . . _Ungh!_. . .Read on.”

“’My dear John,’ she says, ‘Your friend Mr Holmes is quite dour and broody—‘ I wonder:  how can she tell? ‘—dour and broody because he has not yet had a letter from you. I say this as a loving friend, with no intention of harming your pride. . .’” Margaret’s voice trailed off.

John had stopped pulling, though he still stood slightly hunched, with the root in one hand. He cleared his throat, then again. “Go on, then,” he prompted.

“It says, ‘no intention of harming your pride. Pray let Margaret help you write a letter, John, even if it is brief, to calm Mr Holmes’ nerves. He worries some tragedy has befallen you, or that you are ill. I have never seen him look—‘” Margaret raised her gaze to John’s face; his eyes were closed. “’—so sad. Your loving friend, Molly.’”

There was a long silence. Margaret stared at John. John stared at the ground.

“There’s no shame in it, Mr Watson,” Margaret ventured at last, quite bravely. “Plenty of kind and wise people aren’t good with words. Jones is the same.”

John huffed out a half-laugh, still did not look up. “What, the stableman?”

“That’s right.” She gripped the note so hard it bent. “It’s only between you and me, sir, I promise. I’m happy to do it; you’ve been nothing but kind to me.”

John sighed.

“Though Mr Holmes is quite scary.” She tilted her head. “Are you really friends with him?”

John laughed, then cleared his throat once more. “It’s just that he writes in that curly handwriting, you know? The fancy calligraphy,” John half-explained. “I admit I can’t make head nor tail of it.” He cleared his throat one last time, dropped the root and wiped his hands on this trousers. “If you’d just help me with the envelope—the address and that—I can print a little note.”

“I’m glad to, Mr Watson. After supper?”

John nodded. “Thank you, Margaret.” She dashed forward and kissed his cheek, then ran back to the house.

That night (ten more nights without Sherlock), after she and another maid had finished cleaning the dishes, and Mrs Wood had retired to her room to smoke and to sleep, John and Margaret sat side by side at the big wooden table and she filled in the address of the Paris house on an envelope while John printed, as neatly as he could manage, and with only one or two bits of advice from Margaret, a letter to Sherlock.

MY OWN SHERLOCK HOLMES

YOU ARE MY LIFE.

COME HOME SOON AND BRING BACK MY HEART.

YOUR JOHN

*

“The long face doesn’t suit you, John.”

Side by side on Sherlock’s bed, sheet pulled up to their waists, Sherlock’s disheveled hair and John’s bitten lips evidence of their spent desire. Sherlock clenched his pipe in his teeth, and the fine lines around his eyes appeared.

John said nothing, swigged some of Sherlock’s port straight from the bottle.

Sherlock redirected. “Did I ever tell you about the housekeeper here, before Molly came?”

John shook his head. Another swig. Sherlock persuaded the bottle from John’s hand, set it on the night table out of his reach.

“Miss Evans. Welsh, obviously. Sort of.  . ." He made a helpless motion with his hand in the air. " . .What? Dark ginger hair?”

“Auburn.”

“Yes, auburn hair. Quite tall, for a woman. Anyway, she was housekeeper here for five years or so. Her work was adequate, though not particularly impressive.”

John hummed but didn’t act on his impulse to wonder aloud what it might take to impress Sherlock Holmes, where dedication to—and quality of—work were concerned.

“In the final year or so, she was having an affair with the chauffeur, who was then a terribly young fellow with a limp, whose name I can’t recall. Was it a limp? It might have been a paralyzed arm. No matter.”

John tried to reach across Sherlock’s chest for the bottle but Sherlock pushed his arm away.

“Anyway, the chauffeur for some reason was leaving—I think he had a brother working in another house, closer to town, who got him a job with a better wage—and Miss Evans came utterly unhinged.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“It was remarkable; with each day that passed, she was noticeably more mad. Stopped grooming herself, huge rings under her eyes from not sleeping, then she would walk circles on the driveway all night—you could hear the crunch of the gravel under her heels—and then finally the maids found her hanging in the laundry room.”

John stared.

 Sherlock took a final puff from his pipe and set it in its little stand on the night table. He glanced at John, who still stared.

“This is the story you tell me.”

Sherlock tilted his chin.

“You’re leaving day after tomorrow, for two months, and you tell me about mad Miss Evans who killed herself when her lover left.”

Sherlock bit his lip, looked skyward, hummed.

John crossed his arms over his chest.

“I wasn’t suggesting her as a model for appropriate behaviour,” Sherlock offered. “I was merely making conversation.” He reached for John’s forearm, pried it free and entwined their fingers, resting the knot of their hands on his thigh. “You needn’t go _completely_ mad,” he shrugged. “Only just mad enough.”

One side of John’s mouth quirked up, despite himself.

“Just wear that long face that doesn’t suit you,” Sherlock went on. “And do a lot of that sighing you do, when you’re exasperated with me.”

John sighed heavily out his nose.

“Yes, like that. But more melancholy, get your shoulders into it.” Sherlock sighed exaggeratedly, drooping his shoulders, collapsing his chest.

John was fully smiling now, and he leaned his shoulder against Sherlock’s. “And what will you do?” he challenged.

Sherlock shrugged. “Hang myself in the laundry room, I suppose.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Their smiles faded. Sherlock’s tone was gentle. “No. Never. I will never leave you.”

“You’re leaving me day after tomorrow.”

Sherlock turned toward John and with curled fingers and thumb, steadied his chin; Sherlock kissed him.

“I will _never_ leave you.”


	8. The First and The Last

_14 th September_

_MY DEAREST JOHN,_

_I AM SUCH A FOOL. FORGIVE ME._

_I WILL BE BACK HOME TO YOU IN JUST A WEEK’S TIME._

_I PROMISE, MY DEAR JOHN; I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU._

_I AM EVER YOUR_

_Sherlock_

The maids were airing out all the shut-up rooms in preparation for the family’s return.  John persuaded Margaret to leave him Sherlock’s key, once she had remade his bed with fresh sheets, opened his windows, swept his floor, and dusted cobwebs from the corners of his room.

John pinched teacups and pots and pitchers from the pantry, and filled them with wildflowers from the far edge of the west meadow. These he set on Sherlock’s nightstand, the table by his chair, the top of his wardrobe, the windowsills. He fashioned a handsome buttonhole from knapweed and laid it on Sherlock’s pillow.

Beneath Sherlock’s pillow, he slid a large sheet of thick, cream-coloured paper, on which he had drawn a sketch of his own Sherlock Holmes: bare-chested, long-legged, with his bed sheet draped over his lap but his long, collarless neck in wanton, plain view. His dark waves of hair were all undone and fell around his temples and down the back of his neck. This drawing was John’s love letter to Sherlock; in its soft curves and cross-hatched shadows were contained every word John could think of that said he was conquered, enraptured, spellbound, and utterly done in. He was Sherlock’s zealous devotee, and tonight—after fifty long, achingly lonely nights—John would worship him.

*

His face in the lamplight was stunning: still, sweat-sheened, awe-filled, wide open.

John stilled himself, waited.

Sherlock exhaled a stuttering breath.

“Am I hurting you?”

Sherlock shook his head, just a bit, blink and you’d miss it. His gaze was fixed somewhere up and beyond.

“Eyes on me, Sweetness,” John whispered, his determination to keep quiet and still beginning to slip. Sherlock’s starry gaze drifted, slowly, in a lazy arch, until his silver-flecked eyes locked onto John’s eyes. “Dear god, but you are the most beautiful thing,” John gasped.

Sherlock hiccupped, “You’re—“

“Yes.” John moved a bit, then waited, gulped air. “All right?”

In reply, Sherlock clamped his hand on the back of John’s neck, raised his open mouth to John’s, thrust his tongue in desperately, as if he could swallow John whole. Sherlock’s hips began to rock.

John countered Sherlock’s movements and let loose a heavy moan. With one grasping, scrabbling hand John  guided Sherlock’s palm down between them, watched the way Sherlock’s face changed as he began to stroke himself in time with the sway of their bodies. John swallowed against a lump in his throat, moving inside Sherlock. . .his prize, his own angel, the treasure he outlived a wife and survived a war to find.

Sherlock’s hand stuttered, and he squinted, and let go a long, low moan that positively rattled John’s bones, teasing apart the tangle of Want that rested low in John’s gut. John sobbed out a cry as he finished, his body inside Sherlock’s body—what a wonder—and John raised his eyes to study Sherlock’s perfect face, and he thought he might never need to see anything else, just that strong jaw, that knife-edge cheekbone, those impossible eyes, forever and forever and forever because this was his own Sherlock Holmes, beneath him, in his arms, letting John love him until he came undone.

Afterward, they lay in a tangle, each kiss lingering and full of meaning as if it was their last, and the lamp was sputtering as the oil ran out, and Sherlock murmured, “Don’t go.”

John made a questioning noise.

“Don’t go. Stay here tonight. With me.” Sherlock nuzzled the tip of his nose beside John’s. “I want to wake up with you just once before I have to leave.”

John sighed out something like relief. “You’re sure?”

In answer, Sherlock gathered him closer, kissed him deeply, wound one long, pale leg around John’s leg.

They fell asleep with their fingers entwined, sharing the same pillow.

In the morning, Sherlock let John shave him with his glimmering straight razor, wrinkling his nose and tilting his chin and refraining from comment. He let John comb his hair and arrange it, fix it in place with pomade that smelled of sandalwood. John buttoned up Sherlock’s collar—

“I hate this damn thing, strangling you.”

“I know you do.”

\--fix his necktie, and slip a fresh buttonhole into his lapel (forget-me-nots—what else?—and a thistle). John laid the tip of one finger in the center of Sherlock’s bottom lip, and Sherlock’s eyes fell shut, and there was nothing that needed saying.

The staff lined up in the drive to bid the family—and Holmes and Miss Hooper— _bon voyage_ as the automobile pulled away from Stonefield Hall, to take them to the train depot. The maids waved and the footmen stood looking serious, and John bit the inside of his lips and cleared his throat again and again.

He would be fifty nights alone in the dark, without even his own star to light them.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> PoppyAlexander-fic.tumblr.com for other fic updates and things that catch my fancy.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Eight and Fifty Nights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044576) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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